Apocalypse now...

Panic at Restaurant Chez Potty ce soir. Well, to be honest, mayhem set in somewhat earlier than that. After a stupidly busy day ('stupidly busy' in so far as I'm not sure what I actually achieved, but I didn't stop moving from getting out of bed to - well, around now), at nursery pick-up time I also collected a friend of Boy #1's to bring him home for a play-date. (Cue deep-felt shudder from any Mums reading this post).

After marching away from the nursery - Boy #1 and Friend had clearly been reading military history in their Quiet Time, given the rate at which they were issuing orders to each other, Boy #2, and me - we stopped to cross the busy road.

Me: OK, stop, everyone. Wait here until I say go.

Friend: I am the Captain, I am in charge. I say when to go.

Boy #1: No, I am in charge. It's my turn.

Me (picking up Boy #2 and firmly wedging his considerable weight under one arm whilst doing a balancing act with their school-bags, a couple of cards - please, no more party invites! - and a flimsy plastic freezer bag containing Boy #2's baked offering of the day, chocolate rice crispy cakes, yum): No, you're both wrong. I am the general, and I am in charge.

Friend: No, no, I am the general.

Note: we had missed at least one opportunity to cross during this exchange, so I decided to take control.

Me: I am the Brigadier General (having no real idea who outranked who here, but banking on the fact I was dealing with a four year old, for chrissake), because I am the Mummy and we are going to cross the road when I say. Now let's go!

Eventually we got home after more arguing from the back seat of the car about army ranks and whose Daddy goes to the bigger school, and then things started to get interesting.

Demands were made by the Friend for bread with jam on (thankyou MIL, for providing home-made bramble jelly that sits waiting forlornly at the back of the fridge for a hungry visiting child to demand a snack that doesn't involve ham, cheese or chocolate), by Boy #1 for me to time how long each of them wore the knight's outfit to avoid outright hostilities, and by Boy #2 for me to carry him round on my hip in the kitchen whilst he wrapped his legs around me like a monkey and tried to reach the contents of the knife block, the recently boiled kettle, and the controls for the oven.

When Husband arrived for brief visit on his way to the airport (don't ask me where he was off to because I'm too envious to talk about it, but it involves ski-boots, dammit), he stood there blinking whilst the maelstrom whirled around him. The air of chaos was not helped by the fact that for some insane reason I had chosen this afternoon to make some curried parsnip soup (to cap it all the new veg box arrived this afternoon, and I couldn't face throwing yet more food away without making some attempt at being a home-maker), so it smelt somewhat more fragrant than I would have liked.

Husband left again (only to return somewhat later when his flight was cancelled due to recent events at Heathrow), and in the meantime the Friend was picked up by his mum and left, restoring relative calm to the flat.

But then disaster struck.

The menu this evening? Sausages (done to rather more than a turn, must fix that timer), potatoes (what's this stuff, mummy? The skin, darling. Needless to say, not eaten), carrots, and (in an effort to kid myself my children have a varied diet), purple sprouting broccoli. With the exception of the broccoli, fairly bulk-standard pre-schooler food, one would think. But wait. Something is missing - apparantly. Some vital food group. Something necessary to complete any meal with sausages. I was sent post-haste to the kitchen to rectify the oversight.

Imagine the horror then, when I opened the fridge door to find out...

...we had run out of ketchup.